Meet the Adsense Family, Google serves its ads in three flavors, with each of those flavors coming in a range of different shapes and sizes, it is very important to understand the differences between each of those ads, some are ideal for particular locations, some should never be used in certain locations, and some should never be used at all.

The sample page at google.com/adsense/adformats lets you see all of the different kinds of ads at once, it even has links to sample placements that demonstrate how the ads can be used.

Text ads are probably the types of ad that you’re most familiar with, you get a box containing one or a number of ads with a linked headline, a brief description and a URL, you also get the “ads by google”notice that appears on all Adsense ads.

One of the first things people do when they sign up for Adsense is to grab a 468 x 60 ad block, most site owners have the mindset that when they put Google ads on their site, they must place the code that conforms most to traditional web advertising, and what would that be? Right, the 468 x 60, the ubiquitous banner format that we have all come to know and love to ignore.

Everyone is familiar with the 468 x 60, and that is exactly why click-through rate on this size is very low, even among advertisers who use images on their banners, the 468 x 60 block screams, hey, I am an advertisement, whatever you do, do not click me, in fact you should run away from me as fast as you can.

Now, that does not mean you can never use it, you just have to know what you are doing and do it smartly, you have to do everything you can to make sure that, that ad block looks absolutely nothing like a traditional banner ad.